


Fall In(to Me)

by MoonAndPomegranate



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, broken!Bucky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-18 11:23:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1426669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonAndPomegranate/pseuds/MoonAndPomegranate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Winter Soldier: Bucky can't stop trailing Steve Rogers and he doesn't know why. Steve just wants to bring Bucky home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall In(to Me)

After they got Bucky out of that HYDRA base, he had nightmares. Lots of the boys had nightmares, but Bucky slept next to Steve in the barracks, so Steve could hear every whimper and groan. Well, that’s something of a lie. If Bucky was having nightmares Steve probably would have known even if he was sleeping across the camp. There had been something desperate in Steve’s relief at having Bucky returned to him, almost as if he knew how shortlived their reunion would be. He had been so sensitive, so attuned to Bucky - Steve only relaxed when Bucky smiled and he could not rest while Bucky lay awake at night, tense and staring at the dark.

“What’s wrong?” he had asked.

“Nothing,” Bucky would say, belied by the dull echo in his voice.

And when he fell asleep and the dreams inevitably came, Steve would reach a hand across the space between their cots and find Bucky’s hand, trembling and so warm. He would hold on until Bucky calmed, but he was always careful to let go before he fell asleep. He didn’t know what Bucky would think if he woke up holding Steve’s hand, but Steve didn’t want to find out. He just wanted to offer him what comfort he could.

So when Natasha pointed out to Steve that Bucky had been following him for weeks, Steve bit down on his first instinct to approach him. Bucky always used to think it his job to protect Steve - to fight his fights, to tend to his wounds, to make sure he had a place to sleep at night. He was never good at taking Steve’s help when he needed it. Nat told him to keep his distance and thought he was being pragmatic when he listened to her. There was no telling what Bucky’s mental state was and the last thing they needed was a half-deprogrammed super soldier going off the rails.

The stalking he didn’t mind so much. He actually liked it, just a little, because if he kept alert, it was almost like he was keeping track of Bucky, instead of the other way around. He obviously wasn’t doing everything he could to cover his tracks. Natasha’s intel had been thorough, thorough enough that Bucky could leave less Steve knew that if Bucky wanted to kill him, Steve would be dead already. That didn’t keep her from staying at his side or calling in Barton when she couldn’t escort him.

Steve knew she had his best interests at heart. “He’s not the man you knew, Steve,” she said, “Keep an eye out, but from a distance. Leave him be.”

And because he didn’t argue, she thought the matter was settled, but he wrestled with it in every quiet moment. Bucky was _right there_. Steve saw him everywhere, now that he knew to look - a shadow in the corner of his eye, sometimes real, sometimes imagined. Steve picked at those ghostly flickers in his periphery, peeked around corners and stared out windows, trying to will Bucky to just come to him, to ask him one more time, “Who the hell is Bucky?”

And Steve would answer him, “You’re Bucky. Bucky Barnes, the best man I’ve ever known. My oldest friend. It’s you and I’ve missed you so much.”

Over and over that last fight replayed in his mind, the desperation in Bucky’s eyes, the confusion. It was all he could think about. There was so much work to do, as the dust from SHIELD settled and HYDRA came out of the woodwork like roaches scattering in the light. Steve was busy, shuttling between hearings on Capitol Hill and meetings at the Avengers tower and missions in more countries that he could remember. He was pushing himself beyond even what his own body could handle and still he obsessed over Bucky during the hours he was supposed to be sleeping.

Natasha said he was living on the streets, homeless and alone. Bucky, his Bucky, was out there, alive and on his own. Steve wanted to find him and bring him home, a pull so strong it was almost a need. It wasn’t in him to let a friend live in that condition, let alone _Bucky_ , but he remembered how it was.  He remembered waiting late into the night, until Bucky was sleeping sound, to let go of his best friend’s hand, so that when he woke, Bucky wouldn’t know anyone had helped him through the night. Now, it was up to Steve to remember Bucky for both of them.

Steve would let him be, let him come around on his own, heal at his own pace, because that’s how Bucky always wanted it to be. Still, sometimes he couldn’t eat because he didn’t know if Bucky was eating and sleep just didn’t come to him the same way anymore.

***************************

If I remember anything, it is this: a fall. I want to know where I fell from and where I landed. Did I jump or was I pushed? I remember a red room and a white light, which might have been pain or heaven.

My head is full and it is all of it lies.

I am in America, on the Chesapeake Bay. I have a mission to kill Steve Rogers.

But none of that is true, so I wander at night, falling forwards as often as down. None of this is real, but I _remember_ him, I know I do. I keep him in my sight, I always keep him in my sight. It is deep summer and the city stinks, as if it is going putrid underneath the sidewalks. Sometimes I can almost hear it falling apart underneath my head, when I lay down at night in the alley behind his house. I am watching him, waiting for my training to kick in. I was ordered to kill him, so it is only a matter of time before my body takes over and I have my hands wrapped around his throat. I am patient.

I follow him up and down the coasts, across oceans and continents, back to his apartment in this house in the city. I know his patterns, I know the sound of his breath in the dark when he is asleep. I am ready for when the mission comes back to me and I kill him. More often now, I think maybe the order will never return to me, that something has gone wrong. My commanders cannot reach me or I missed a rendezvous or my training has been disrupted or broken. I watch him and in those moments I am lost. I feel the gaping hole opening up underneath, pushing me toward my fall. I long for the pain, for something real, for the orders to direct my hands. My mission was to kill Steve Rogers, so I keep him in my sight. Or maybe none of that it true. Maybe it’s just that watching him is soothing, like the like the rhythm of a heartbeat in an open wound.

More than the sun or the moon, he is the constant in my days and nights. He is my mission, but I can’t remember who gave the order. Sometimes I remember who gave the order and that’s when I forget what the mission was. Never both at once: I can either know who gave me my mission or I can know what the mission is, but never both at once. I stay near him, in case I figure it out.

I watch him through surveillance cameras, window panes, across river banks, reflected in rearview mirrors. I only lose him when I sleep, when I’m falling.

But I don’t think I could ever lose him, not really. I think I could find him anywhere. He is the only force I have found which is stronger than gravity. I fall towards him as often as I fall down.

He is not what I dream about. He is only what I remember, the memory of him dragging through my mind like a trawling net, dredging up nothing, put pulling, pulling, pulling on all that empty water. I know the orders, but I do not remember my commanders and I don’t remember where they were given. I know his face, but I do not know where we met. Besides the pull of orders and the pull of memory, there is nothing.

All sensations come to me from far away, as if I am underwater or as if I made them all up. I am imagining all this; the city, the river, the heat, the sweat - none of it is real. The reality is just him and me on that roof, the moment our eyes met. That’s where I am now. I am only imagining that I am sitting outside his bedroom, my training gone and my orders failing. I am on the roof, about to kill him, only fantasizing about being lost, confused, and alone.

I think I used to have an excellent memory. I do not remember ever forgetting before this. I would like to think I would not forget someone like him, but I am not real and none of this is true - it doesn’t matter what I would like to think.

Instead of following him home tonight, I take off running. I know where he’s going, I can always find him. He fills my mind even when he’s out of my sight, so I push myself harder. I run for hours until I forget what it is to like something or to want something. I think of him and feel nothing, not even the pressure of my orders to kill him, not even the weight of my arm. I think the reason I keep falling is my arm. It’s heavy and cold and it weighs me down.

I have fallen into the depth of the night. I’m hungry, so I order at something hot at yellow-lit diner. When my food comes, I strangle the waiter (silent as a shadow) because I don’t have any money and then I slip away before anyone notices. I forget my food at the table, but I’m not hungry anymore. I return to watch Steve Rogers, who is sleeping.

I used to sleep often, for years and years at a time, but I never dreamed. Either this means I never slept or I have never woken. Now when I dream, I dream of falling. Sometimes I am falling through the dark or the cold or the water. Or is it just the same dark, cold water over and over?

The next day he wakes with the sun and it is unbearable to watch him. I feel as if I’m forgetting my mission every time the daylight hits his face, so I run again, in the opposite direction that Steve takes. I walk until the night breaks and I’m at a cemetery gate. I fall beneath a monument and try to mimic that place in my mind I used to go, back when I slept without dreaming. It was cold there and silent and above all, still. I didn’t remember anything there, least of all the sensation of falling. I don’t remember anything now either, but that is somehow worse. I cannot find that place anymore because I have no one to take me there nor anyone to lead me back. The night air whistles by me and, oh God, it sounds like falling.

When he looked at me, it was different. He makes things real by looking at them. He made me a true thing. I think I am his dream, which is why it’s so easy to fall, to slip away into blackness when he isn’t looking at me. I wonder how I could know that, because he only saw me once, twice, three times before. On the roof, on the street, on the carrier. Like I blinked three times and then closed my eyes forever. Nothing is real. The grass is soft beneath me and below it the earth is hard and cool, but it’s all wrong. He is nowhere near me, so the world disappears. I am a soldier without my mission, a machine without my programming. I am so tired.

I wake underneath an angel, stone wings stretched out to the open sky. Angels are the soldiers of God, unquestioning, dutiful, willess. They carry out His mission and kill whomever they are commanded. But I don’t think it was God who ordered me to kill Steve Rogers. Rogers’ friends have wings - God’s on their side. They have metal wings and all I have is this metal arm that weighs me down. They are the angels, not me.

Besides, I fell, like the devil I am. I fell long and lonely, as if from heaven, and I fell short and hard, as if into a grave. And once, not very long ago, Steve Rogers’ fell with me. In the morning light, I close my eyes and try to remember. That felt real, the muddy water and his lifeless body in my hand. I can remember, it was real. I try to resist the call of memory, the force that will take me out of this graveyard, along that lonely highway, back to his window.

If I had wings, I could resist falling, too. Still, I try.

If I am nothing but his dream, I am a bad one, because when he looked at me, his face darkened, like clouds over the sun. But he looked and I was real. That was real - that moment, because I can remember it.

He reminds me of the sun, which is interesting, because I can’t always remember the sun. For a very long time I would wake and it would always be night. Or maybe I was just a shadow then, so if there was daylight, I couldn’t feel it.

Shadows do not have memories and are not, actually, real. A shadow is just the spot where the sun is missing. It all makes the kind of sense that feels hollow and cold, sense like a whistling void beneath my feet.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know about you guys, but I felt cheated out of sufficient Bucky angst in the movie. I supposed I should follow this up with some fluff?


End file.
